Mixed Nuts
by drwritermom
Summary: After one disastrous date too many, Harry agrees to go on a final blind date with an unknown suitor. His world is rocked. JKR hosts this magical universe, I am lucky to play in it. Prompt: 111 - Harry is sick of the gold diggers and attention seekers. He agrees to a blind date set up only to discover that his intended date isn't anyone he would have expected.


Harry Potter, his best mate, Ron Weasley, and his best friend, Hermione Granger-Weasley, were huddled together in a booth at The Three Broomsticks on a bustling Saturday night. The Golden Trio struggled to hear each other above the din.

"Hermione, I'm not letting you set me up on another blind date as long as I live! I don't care how attractive, rich, famous, intelligent, athletic, or talented he or she is, I am finished trawling through the shark-infested dating pool. I swear, every last one of them either wants to be prominently featured on the society page of the Daily Prophet with the sainted 'Man Who Lived', or he or she wants unfettered access to my vaults. I can't win!"

"Come on, Harry it can't be that bad. Surely you must have met someone who piqued your interest -"

Harry would not be interrupted from his woeful monologue.

"And let's not forget the most dangerous of suitors, those who wish to carry the next generation of Potters. One of them actually believed that Merlin had sent her on a divine quest to be the vessel for my seed. If I'm lying, I'm dying, that witch wasn't a day less than a hundred and two years old! She must have Imperioed the dating agency staff and glamoured her photo to get past the screening stage!"

Ron laughed so hard that a swig of Ogden's finest shot out of his nose, twin flaming vapour trails singeing his nose hairs on the way out. A well-aimed Aguamenti spell from Harry's wand doused the flames, leaving Ron sputtering.

"Harry, what went so wrong with your date with Quincy, that you are swearing off all future dates?"

"Hermione, last night was so bizarre, I wouldn't know where to begin. I should have had a clue things were going to get weird, what with him bearing the same name as a medical examiner on American telly!"

Hermione gave Harry a knowing look, having been raised by Muggles.

Ron, who had just stopped coughing, and finally stopped blowing his drenched nose, croaked "Well, what does this bloke do for a living?"

"He's an Unspeakable, as your wife already knows, so I haven't a clue what he does by day, but I sure as hell know what he does after hours!"

"C'mon, mate, it can't be that bad!"

"Ron, his hobbies are magical creature taxidermy and ventriloquism."

"Do you mean stuffing and mounting wild beasts? That's creepy, Harry!"

"Ron, Hermione, if it were only that, I could have ignored his eccentricities and celebrated the excellence of his exquisitely chiseled abs. He animates his taxidermy specimens, and throws his voice, making these dead, supposedly stuffed and mounted animals perform."

"That's funny, Harry!"

"Ron, that's macabre! What happened?"

"I was standing there, feigning interest in his hobbies while imagining him naked, when I lost my grip on my wine glass. As I bent over to pick it up, a stuffed and mounted crup leapt from its pedestal, bounded up behind me, got up on his back legs, planted his front paws on my arse, snuffled it and growled, 'Fancy a rim job, Laddie?'"

Harry paused to suck in a lungful of air before continuing. "If that weren't enough, a previously living Jarvey abandoned his pedestal, galloped towards my wedding tackle, and cackled, 'Fancy a wee bit of nut juggling, Harry?' I didn't even stand up, I Apparated, arse-up, straight into my own living room!"

Ron guffawed raucously, as Hermione struggled valiantly to keep her composure, failing spectacularly. A peal of laughter erupted so forcefully, that she barely escaped toppling from her chair.

"Shut it, you two, it's not that funny! And it's entirely your fault, 'Mione, you set me up with that Wizarding weirdo!"

The two giggling members of the Golden Trio did their best to rein in the hilarity. Ron finally spoke up.

"Just imagine the headline, Harry - Boy Who Lived Propositioned by Pervy Past-tense Pooch, Deceased Jarvey Joins the Fracas."

Sensing that Harry was about to scarper, Hermione elbowed Ron into silence, and spoke.

"Harry, I know someone who would be perfect for you."

"I'd tap dance naked in the Slytherin common room before I'd let you set me up with another one of your colleagues."

Knowing she'd earned that rebuke, Hermione chose to plow ahead without taking offense. "Seriously, Harry, I know someone who is perfect for you. He's a bit older, and is tall, dark, and brooding - he's just your type! He is successful, disdains the spotlight, has a wicked wit, is devastatingly intelligent, and does not suffer fools gladly."

"Holy Merlin, Hermione, breathe, your lips are turning blue. Does this paragon of snarky virtue have a name?"

"Blind date means you go in blind, no prior knowledge. Just give this one a chance, Harry, he'll surprise you."

"The last one surprised me. Any more excitement, and I'll be vacationing in the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's!"

"Oh, lose the melodrama, Harry, you'll be fine. Just let me set up the time and the place, and I'll owl you with the details," Hermione chirped.

"If any previously living, currently deceased, lewdly propositioning creatures attempt to violate my person, 'Mione, I swear I will unleash upon you a jism of Jarveys, charmed to heckle you every single time you even think of getting frisky with Ron!"

She couldn't help but laugh at her best friend. "Now who is turning blue, buddy? No talking zombie beasts, I promise!"

One week full of threatening to back out of the blind date and embrace a life of celibacy in seclusion at a remote mountaintop retreat later, Harry was standing at the entrance of The Three Broomsticks. He was about to Apparate back to his flat when he felt a tingling of familiar magic ricochet up and down his spine.

"It's not possible. He's dead," Harry muttered.

"I assure you, Mister Potter, I am quite alive," a very not dead Severus Snape purred as he turned Harry to face him. "And to put your mind at ease, I am not a reanimated specimen under Unspeakable Quincy's control, although I wouldn't mind a go at your mixed nuts!"

"Hermione told you about that?"

"No, my Unspeakable partner Quincy did. He's in a locked room at St. Mungo's now, with a 24-hour Auror guard at the door, at my insistence. It was bad enough, that he believed his lewd, beast-delivered banter was witty repartee. That he molested you with animal corpses was insanity. If you hadn't escaped when you did, he would have added you to his ghastly collection."

Severus Snape's surprise appearance, coupled with the knowledge that his last date could have ended in death, had Harry shell-shocked. "Come, Harry, please allow me to take you somewhere you can process what I can only surmise is information overload."

"You called me Harry-"

"We are on a date."

"Okay, Severus. I need caffeine, it feels like all of the energy has been sucked right out of me."

"I make a delectable iced mocha, Harry, would you care to come to my home for coffee? Just coffee, as I don't believe you can stand to have me, as the Muggles say 'rock your world' any further."

Harry offered a weak laugh as he tucked his arm into the crook of Severus'. "No, Snape, my world has been rocked enough for one evening."

Several months, and absolutely no deceased magical beasts, later:

"And do you, Severus Tobias Snape, take Harry James Potter to be your bond mate, to love, cherish, protect, and - oh Severus, do you really want me to say this?" Hermione mumbled.

"I won't bond with him if you don't," Harry interjected.

"Please, Mrs. Weasley, just recite the line," Snape groused.

"Okay, to love, cherish, protect, and refrain from calling him dunderhead for as long as you both draw breath?"

"Hold your breath, Harry," Severus answered. He continued, "I do, dunderhead."

Harry's jaw dropped as he gasped.

"My own, I had to say it one last time. We'll be bonded for a long time, I must have my last hurrah."

"And with that, I pronounce you bonded spouses. You may now kiss each other, with a reminder that there are children present."

All those assembled chuckled at Hermione's choice of words. The amorous escapades of the two newly bonded mates were well known to them all.

Harry reached from beneath his robe and produced a can with its label obscured. He slowly popped the top. Looking deeply into the fathomless onyx eyes of his beloved, Harry murmured, "Fancy a go at my mixed nuts?"


End file.
